San Francisco, CA

June 10, 2015 5pm-7pm

Bitcoin, the Blockchain and
the Future of the Financial World

Status and Perspectives

description

Revolutionary technologies have greatly accelerated their pace in the last 20 years. From the Internet in the 1990’s, to social networks in the 2010’s, to mobile commerce and payments - and now Bitcoin. The Internet brought us eCommerce and information that are now at our fingertips with mobile devices and even beyond with the emergence of IoT protocols.
Social platforms have quickly created thriving news hubs and marketplaces by enabling instant, decentralized, peer to peer exchanges, connecting the world as never before. The internet has become a platform for innovation that we couldn’t have imagined at its advent, and Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology is considered by many to be the “Internet of money."

Bitcoin’s blockchain technology holds the potential to revolutionize the financial sector by transforming how we handle contracts, transactions and their documentation, and perform exchange of value between two non-trusting parties.

But how much truth and reality are behind these statements? That’s what we want to discuss in this event, bringing together thought leaders in the financial sector and Bitcoin industry.

This BayPay event will cover innovations and investments happening in the currencies, applications and platforms of the future and will highlight beyond Bitcoin the business opportunities and challenges in front of us.

speakers

Panelists Bios

John McDonnell, CEO at Bitnet Technologies Ltd

John McDonnell is a seasoned FinTech executive with 20+ years of experience managing cutting-edge payment technology companies. Prior to founding Bitnet, John served as Senior Vice President for Visa and Head of Business Development for CyberSource, a global provider of electronic payment processing and security solutions for eCommerce and POS merchants that was acquired by Visa in 2010. Previously, John served as Executive Vice President - Chief Strategy Officer, General Counsel and a member of the board of directors of TNS, a global provider of business-critical communications services to card processing, financial services and telecommunications industries. John was head of business development at Paymo (now BOKU), where he helped to build a mobile payments network that enabled over 1.5 billion consumers to pay by mobile phone. John also served as Senior Vice President – Corporate Development for enterprise software provider PaylinX and negotiated its merger with CyberSource in 2000. Earlier in his career, John practiced securities law and has also been an active private investor with extensive board experience. John earned his B.A. degree with honors from Stanford University and his J.D. from UCLA law school.

Micah Winkelspecht, CEO and Founder of Gem

Micah Winkelspecht is the CEO and Founder of Gem, a simple and secure platform for blockchain developers. Gem’s mission is to empower individuals to be sovereign over their own assets, starting with bitcoin. An active Bitcoin community organizer and thought leader, Micah regularly speaks, moderates, and hosts at Bitcoin and startup events, and is co-organizer of the Los Angeles Bitcoin meetup group of over 1,000 members. Micah is also a significant contributor to the Bitcoin developer community as the author of MoneyTree, a popular open-source library used to create Bitcoin wallets and the first Ruby implementation of a Bitcoin HD wallet. Prior to his contributions to the Bitcoin world, Micah spent 10+ years developing software for companies including AT&T Interactive, Guide Financial and Pose. Twitter: @winkelspecht
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/winkelspecht
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Daniel Chatelain, Managing Director at The BayPayForun

Daniel Chatelain is a payment industry executive focused on innovation in commerce and sitting on the board of directors or advisors of emerging companies. He started The BayPay Forum to help foster innovation in payment and commerce. The organization gathers today over 8,000 executives from over 2,800 different companies and organizes events for senior executives to understand new trends and network with peers. Prior to that, Daniel was CEO, President & COO of companies he started as an entrepreneur or within the Lagardere (Elle, Woman’s Day, Car & Driver, Hachette, Canal Satellite) and EADS group (Airbus, Ariane, Eurocopter) and Vice President of a VC backed companies giving him a wide experience of growing companies domestically and internationally in the banking, telecom and interactive media industries as an entrepreneur, corporate or VC backed senior executive.

Paul Puey, CEO and Founder at Airbitz Inc

Paul is CEO and Co-Founder of Airbitz, a company with a vision of delivering privacy and security of digital assets through ease of use and decentralization. Airbitz has won accolades including being one of the top 3 mobile apps for bitcoin in the 2014 Blockchain Awards, being voted the #1 Bitcoin Company by the World Crypto Network, and being voted in the 'Top 50 FinTech Companies to Watch' by AlwaysOn Inc.
As an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduate of UC Berkeley, Paul possesses a wide range of technical skills from 3D visual engineering to development of custom web content management systems. He held lead engineering positions with Nvidia Corp and Chromatic Research. Most recently he owned and operated several non-technical small businesses where he implemented solutions to streamline the intersection of people, business, and technology.
Paul combines his lifelong technical and business experience to drive Airbitz to be the leading platform for digital currencies.

Johnny Reinsch, SVP Strategy at Xapo

Johnny is SVP, Strategy at Xapo, a bitcoin security company that is the largest outsourced custodian of bitcoin in the world. Xapo's mission is to empower the unbanked in emerging economies by providing convenient and secure access to bitcoin to anyone with a mobile phone. Xapo has garnered the interest of some of Silicon Valley's most notable VC investors and is advised by the likes of Dee Hock, founder of Visa, John Reed, former CEO of Citi and Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury to Bill Clinton. Johnny is responsible for guiding high level corporate strategy, partnerships, sales channels and global expansion at Xapo. Johnny also devotes a substantial portion of his time engaging directly with regulators - both in the U.S. and abroad - on issues relating to bitcoin regulation.
Prior to joining Xapo Johnny worked as an M&A attorney for the international law firm Goodwin Procter LLP doing large deals for domestic and foreign technology companies. Johnny is extremely positive on the potential for blockchain technology to enable autonomous business entities and its implications for digital assets.

list of attendees

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presentations and video recording

You can find the presentations and a recording of the event with this link:

Download the last version of the NYDFS Bitlicense regulation below

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